


The Secret

by notabadday



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, the fluffiest of all the fluff in all the land
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2015-11-11
Packaged: 2018-04-30 21:19:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5180120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notabadday/pseuds/notabadday
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Simmons finally breaks the silence. </p><p>  <i>The fear has become manageable. The worst memories have faded to black. She’s found her laugh again. The day feels so reassuringly normal – by their standards anyway. That’s what compels Simmons, at last, to revisit a conversation that demands no interference but always seems to find it. </i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Tea or Coffee

**Author's Note:**

> Imagine it: months have passed, Will has come and gone (pick whichever theory you like: post-rescue dumped, never real in the first place, secretly evil and eventually offed), Fitz and Simmons are finally back in a good place. It's easy again. They're stronger for it. Best friends again. But every time they've tried to broach the subject of their romantic stylez feelings, something terrible's happened. It takes an ordinary kind of day to inspire the courage to go there again...

Lunchtime on a bright spring day marks 4,722 hours since the end of a 4,722 hour ordeal. No one notices. Not even Simmons is marking the days, hours or minutes. Somewhere inside all of those hours, the old Simmons has assimilated with the new. The fear has become manageable. The worst memories have faded to black. She’s found her laugh again. The day feels so reassuringly normal – by their standards anyway.

 That’s what compels Simmons, _at last_ , to revisit a conversation that demands no interference but always seems to find it. Previous attempts hadn’t just gone wrong, they had taken such traumatic turns that fear of inviting further pain had become an almost impossibly large hurdle to overcome. But the feeling of normal – a special kind of normal where days are spent calming inhumans whose lives have irrevocably transformed, or developing sedatives powerful enough to tranquillize even the most powerful of them – is what persuades Simmons that today might be her moment.

 Fitz is thumbing through his notes on some of the new tech he's developing in the lounge when Simmons finds him. Quick steps come to a sudden halt in the doorway. He doesn’t look up, doesn’t need to to know it’s her, but immediately falls into casual conversation. “Hey, I think I’ve figured out a way to improve the effectiveness of the ICERs at long-range. If I change the release mechanism-”

 Shifting on the spot, Simmons interjects abruptly: “I have a secret.”

 “From me?” He looks up.

 “From you, yes.”

 “How’d you manage that?” Fitz says, a smile breaking out. The fact that things will never be as bad as they once were eases his concerns, a relaxed question appearing in his expression instead of what might have in the past been an interrogation. 

She laughs, nerves making it a goofy one. “I don’t know.”

 “Is it bad?” It’s the first hint of worry, the edge of vulnerability creeping in to remind them both that they’re still human, and fallible.

 “I don’t know. Not…” She thinks about it for a moment, looks at him looking at her. “I don’t think so.”

 “Okay. Tell me.” 

 “So, err, you know when we were in the pod…” Simmons watches as the blood drains from Fitz’s face, as his eyes fall out of her locked gaze. She holds strong. “Thank you, you know, again for… for saving me…”

“Likewise.” He shrugs awkwardly. It’s a charming kind of dismissive that assuages any guilt on Simmons’ part. She routinely forgets the last part of the story, the part where she saves him back. It’s a footnote in her memory. As her eyes fill up, moisture mixing with mascara, he adds: “We’ll always… have each other, won’t we? You’re my best friend.”

 She nods and the echo of their exchange pushes her to continue. “You remember what you said to me? About being more than that?”

 “Oh.” Fitz’s face tightens. "You want to talk about that… _now_?”

 "Yes," Simmons replies firmly. “I tried to talk to you about it before but-”

 “Yeah.”

 “-it went awry.”

 Fitz is quiet, awaiting further explanation about why she’s decided to invite the elephant back into the room. He puts his notes to one side and moves toward the kitchen with Simmons’ eyes following him. He grabs the kettle, fills it up with water and clicks it into action. “Tea or coffee?”

 After a brief hesitation, Simmons eventually moves after him.

 "No one's ever gonna kiss you if your breath always stinks of tea," she teases from a few steps away, his back turned to her as he grabs a teabag from a box on the counter. It makes him unsteady.

 "I suspect tea breath is the least of my problems, Simmons," he says, a little more flippantly than intended, too hasty with his retort in an effort to avoid the pauses between them.

"Oh, I don't know about that," she says, flirting a little but not enough for him to believe it.

 "Jemma?"

 "Don't drink the tea."

 "Why? What did you do to my tea? Are you trying to poison me and now you're feeling guilty about it and that's actually the secret you were keeping and the other thing was just a distraction because you couldn't decide whether or not to tell me?"

 "Wow. You read me like a book," she replies, wryly. "Put the damn tea down, Fitz."

 "Why?"

 "Because I once kissed a man who'd just drunk a lot of coffee and it made me feel very nauseated. And we were having a nice conversation. Weren't we having a nice conversation?"

 "It’s not coffee. It’s tea, Simmons.”

 "Fitz,” she sighs, rolling her eyes to reiterate her message.

 "Why did you bring up that thing I said, Jemma?”

 They’re standing a few feet apart looking at each other, words on their lips: his questions and her answers. _I really like you_ sits at the front of both their minds. A good starting point. In that dark bunker kitchen, years of similar moments under their belts by now, another starting point is on the tip of Simmons’ tongue. Over the silence, she eventually replies: "I just wanted to say... _likewise_."

 Fitz looks as though he might just burst into tears but manages not to. The kettle clicks off behind him but he doesn’t take a blind bit of notice. The corners of Jemma’s mouth lift into a nervous smile, her eyes waiting for his encouragement. Caution fading fast, he steps forward and takes her face in his hands. His palm moves affectionately from her cheek to her neck. He lets his thumb linger gently on her jaw-line.

 “You want us to be… more than friends?” he asks, desperate not to misunderstand.

 She sighs against him. “More than anything.”

 The smile Simmons had been fronting with gives way to a genuine one, confidence beaming from her now-parted lips, cheeks lifted in the expression and bright eyes examining the close-up of him. A little laugh escapes her as she impatiently closes whatever gap’s left between them, lips crashing against each other with unbridled urgency. The kisses that have lived for so long in their imaginations are either forgotten or realized as all of a sudden the reality overshadows everything else.

 Tea and coffee is forgotten. He’ll go without and sleep all the more soundly for it. It’s not the only reason he’ll sleep soundly.


	2. Tremendous

The morning after Simmons’ confession, she and Fitz both wake up wearing grins. Simmons stirs first – always the early riser of the two. It gives her a chance to process it, maybe get her panic attack out of the way before Fitz can bear witness. She is facing out of the bed as her eyes open, but turns towards him as soon as her brain has caught up.

 She’s seen him sleep a thousand times. Half of their nights at the academy would end with one or both of them face down in their books after shared study sessions. She never took much notice before. Now, he’s lying next to her and there’s a half-smile on his face and she feels a burst of impatience waiting for him to wake up. She resists the urge to poke him. Simmons instead moves her hand to her own face, breathes into it and then sniffs. At this particularly unfortunate moment, Fitz stirs. Her hand flies down and she smiles.

 "Hello," says a drowsy Fitz.

 "Hiya," she squeaks back. It’s not quite what she intends but it comes out a little silly.

 They look at each other for a beat before Fitz asks, "How do you feel?"

 An awkward laugh. So awkward, in fact, that she feels her body tense up. "We're naked."

 "You're freaking out,” he notes calmly.

 "I'm not. It's just... It's a little bit weird." Simmons shifts towards him so that they are intimately facing one another, cheeks resting against pillows with barely any space between them. "It is though, right? It's different."

 "Yeah. Are you okay, Jem?"

 "Did you call me ‘Jem’ before?" she asks, her eyes wide.

 "Yeah. You don't like it now?"

 "No, I do. I just... _Fitz_." Simmons stops herself abruptly as she says his name. She lets her face relax to neutral. _Fitz_ , she thinks. She breathes in and out. She has to think about it, but she just about manages – _in, and out_. He says nothing, patiently watching as she talks herself down from minor panic.

 Once she’s visibly calmer, Fitz affectionately brushes the back of his hand against her cheek.

 "I love you," she says firmly, nodding. Fitz smiles brightly, teeth out and eyes glistening, as he thumbs away one runaway tear on her cheek. They move to the centre of the bed in perfect time to kiss, something that still feels beautifully odd. "I can't believe this is happening." 

"I can't believe my luck," he says, with barely enough distance between their lips to avoid contact. “Are you sure you love _me_? You haven’t just confused me for Ryan Gosling?”

 “Do people often confuse the two of you?”

 “Constantly.” He rolls his eyes theatrically.

 "Nope, not Gosling.” Simmons laughs but her expression isn’t all light. “I’m a Leo Fitz girl. Always have been, actually."

 "Well,” he shrugs, lightening the tone for fear of what he’ll come out with if he doesn’t, “what a singular honour for you."

 Simmons laughs again mutedly, throwing her head back a little against the pillow before leaning over to shower his face with kisses. His face scrunches but his hand supports her back encouragingly and the look he gives her when she stills is reassurance enough that he’s perfectly content.

 As though anxious that she’ll lose her nerve, Simmons repeats, “I love you,” before tenderly kissing him once more.

 With her hands resting on his now ever-so-slightly wet cheeks, he confesses, "I feel like... like, we're about to have the most fun anybody's ever had."

 "You want to have sex again?"

 "No, I meant just... our lives. I feel like, everything is going to be so special because I have you." He pauses, before adding: "We _could_ have sex again, though. If you want."

 "Yes," she says, grinning. "That’s honestly how I felt when we met, you know, and I was right. Since then, everything's been tremendous fun.” Then she adds quietly, offhandedly: “ _Almost_ everything."

 There’s a tinge of solemnity in the air, carried in on the almost that Simmons references. But Fitz is too happy to allow even a hint of sorrow to come between them and instead mockingly repeats, " _Tremendous_?"

She pokes her tongue out. "I stand by it."

 "What a silly word."

 "I thank you." Simmons silences Fitz with her lips, wrapping her arm around him and pulling him on top of her.

 He deepens their kiss, hands moving to places that had previously been very, very off limits, before laughing against her mouth, his thoughts return to her amusing word choice. “ _Tremendous_. Sure you wouldn’t describe it as… stupendous?” He kisses her again. “Splendiferous?” Another kiss. “Superb!” They continue laughing into kisses punctuated by Fitz’s teasing. “Marvellous. Terrific. Magnificent.” 

“I feel like I’m having sex with a thesaurus.” 

“I’ll stop.” She pouts a little before he clarifies: “-Listing words.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed both chapters. 
> 
> P.S. THAT EPISODE LAST NIGHT OMG!!!!!! PERTHSHIRE!!!!!! Has Perthshire ever made so many people cry before? Probably not. (PERTHSHIRE!)

**Author's Note:**

> The second chapter of my 'Time, As a Symptom' fic is coming soon, I promise! I've been working hard but my graduation was this weekend so I was a busy non-writing bee. I found this in my drafts folder, though, and thought it was in decent shape for posting! I'm always about the fluff, so. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Be sure to kudos/comment if you please.


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